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February 19, 2010


Big A

Excellent post.


Great post. The site Song by Toad has written about this and his experiences: http://songbytoad.com/2010/02/owning-information-and-terminating-debate/


Great post. Right on the money. Here's what doesn't make sense to me in the IFPI's DMCA notice you linked to.

They say that these Google-hosted sites "are offering direct links to" recordings with copyrights that IFPI looks out for, and that they "have a good faith belief that the above-described activity is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law."

The message never claims that Google is hosting the files -- just hosting pages that LINK TO the files. How is this a violation of DMCA or other copyright law? I don't think anyone needs permission to link to a file that someone else is hosting, regardless of what's in that file. So is the IFPI overreaching, or am I somehow incorrect?



Hey Mike, interesting point. I wondered the same thing in fact. Here are two interesting articles about the (il)legality of links to infringing content

A UK court recently found that links to infringing (video) content is not infringing: http://techdirt.com/articles/20100212/1549298157.shtml

but in the US, seems like so far the courts have decided differently

anyone have any more up-to-date examples of US "links to infringing content" cases?

Catching The Waves

Thank you for the excellent post. The internet is outpacing the regulators: it was ever thus. Unfortunately, that means that the regulators panic and throw a net over everyone, including the vast majority of law-abiding users. Creative Commons licences are a partial solution to the problem, but it is still infuriating to see innocent bloggers punished for helping out the music industry with that same industry's knowledge and abettal.


Well it is completely true that the internet is growing faster that the moderators can cope. Just last week i tried to outsource 10 articles for a relatively cheap fee, the guy just probably Googled the topics and with all boldness copied and pasted those same articles word for word and gave back to me. If not for my ability to trace copyrighted material, I probably would have just posted those articles on my site and land myself several law suits.


Interesting post Jason. As for Google, I am not particularly sympathetic to all the Blogger accounts. There are problems with offering up your whole data-body to Google for data mining, and I don't share the surprised outrage of others when a giant transnational corporation does something that violates privacy concerns or over-reaches in the face of the DCMA. There are alternatives.

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